Right around Christmas time, the season of giving, I was returning from a visit with the element of family that I don't see very often. My children and I were in the middle of nowhere, on a road slicked in places with ice, and I had seen few cars on my way home. The snow was still piled high on the road's edges, right up to the white lines on both lanes. The frigid air was so crisp that I wasn't even driving the speed limit for fear of hitting black ice.
I came to a straight stretch on the road and kicked my speed up a couple of notches. I passed a fence post and a white blur darted into my peripherals. I turned my head a little to see what it was and an owl's tail feathers fanned out right in my direct line of sight. I blinked and I was looking right up an owl's butt.
Immediately, I let off the gas and went to hit the brakes, but my logic kicked in over my emotions and I realized that if I dodged or braked, I might very well lose traction. The owl flew along with my windshield brushing his tail feathers for longer than I would have thought he could, but when he dipped a wing to change direction, the car got him.
I'm the type of person who has to make sure that her roadkill is actually dead, as I can't stand the thought of any creature suffering needlessly. After a bad word or two that prompted my children to tune in and ask me what had happened, I pulled off on the shoulder and went to make sure there was a corpse and not a pain filled bird.
The tiny body lay near the middle of the road, with one wing spread across one yellow line. In the moonlight, enhanced by the reflection off the snow, I thought I saw its chest rise and fall. I took a couple of steps farther and the owl popped up and flopped its way to the white line, scaring a year or so off my life.
I said a few more bad words and got back in the car, putting it in reverse to try and finish the poor thing off. My five-year-old daughter was babbling that "we had to kill it because it couldn't live while in such pain and we couldn't leave it" to try to stop the sobbing of my eight-year-old son. Backing up took all of my concentration since I was trying to keep my tires aligned with the white line and I responded with simple grunts to her exclamations of "Right, Mama? Right?" repeated endlessly and tearfully.
When I was sure I had gone far past the spot where the owl had landed, I still hadn't spotted the body or felt the bump as the tires went over it. Admittedly, the owl would make only a small bump, but I was waiting for it. I turned my attention forward and advanced in increments, examining the roadside in my headlights. Still no owl.
I got back out in the freezing cold and squinted as I searched for the little squish I wished I was certain of. Instead, as I walked the line, I saw movement off in the two-feet deep snow. With a few more bad words, I debated if it was really worth getting snow in my sneakers, until I caught a faint wail coming through the closed windows of my car. Crap. I had no choice. I took two steps into the snow, just enough to wet the ankles of my jeans when it melted and to have a couple of clumps drop into my shoes when the injured bird took flight, gliding in for a rough landing back on the yellow line.
I debated my options. I could get back in the car and try to squish it again, but that could just result in another round of flopsy. I could get in the car and lie to my children, but then I'd have to deal with my conscience, knowing that I had left it to die. My cold feet would feel even worse if I chose that course of action. Finally I concluded I had no real choice.
I took off my coat and tiptoed toward the poor thing. The rise and fall of its chest was clearly visible now as it labored for breath. When I was several feet away, I tossed my coat on top of it then stepped forward and carefully gathered it up.
Getting back in the car, my kids asked me what I had done and I explained as I headed back down the road. I worried about the owl getting enough air and decided to pull off the road as soon as I came to a spot that wasn't a snow drift. While I drove, my mental voices had a serious debate about what I was going to do with the owl, both in the short and long term. While they proffered multiple suggestions, none seemed to fit the bill I was searching for. The lights of a convenience store ahead lit the night and a solution came to me as I flipped my turn signal.
Two days before during my after Christmas shopping, I had purchased a new coffee maker for the teacher workroom at school. Since I had attendance window duty first thing in the morning, I always got the last cup of coffee left in the pot. Unfortunately, this cup was usually half grounds since we could not seem to find a filter that would hold up under the force of the hot water. Plus, another teacher always set the pot up for a quick flip in the morning and I wanted a machine that would do the self-timer bit and turn on even if she wasn't around to flip the switch. It took quite a bit of searching to locate the one I wanted on the shelf, since the store was running a sale and most of the timer ones were already purchased, but I had succeeded, quite proud of myself.
School began in two days and I knew the coffee maker would be well secured in styrofoam. As soon as I pulled into the parking lot, I jumped out, dug through the Christmas clutter in my trunk, and unearthed the new pot. I pulled out the maker, carefully keeping the styrofoam together around it and laid the ensemble back in a safe little nook of wrapping paper. The box was far more important to me at that moment.
I moved around to the passenger door and worked very carefully to gently rest the injured owl in the box. As soon as I saw it was safe and still alive, I closed the lid, hoping to lessen its fear. The short term solution met, the voices began working on the long term; who was going to kill this owl for me?
In my chosen home, I have more friends than I've ever had before. I ran through the list of all of them in my head and came up with several who either hunt or have husbands who hunt, but I couldn't think of a one who would still be up at this hour of the night. While they're wonderful friends, there's only one who I'm close enough to that I would wake her to shoot an owl and she was on the opposite end of the county, another good two hours' worth of driving. As the smell of bird filled my car, I decided to do what most distraught girls with my background would do. I ran home to Daddy.
I couldn't call my parents because they were out at a dinner party. I also didn't want to actually ask my father to kill the owl because he would swear and/or mock me quite a bit. Mostly, I knew where he kept his guns, so we headed down the mountain to kill an owl.
My daughter fell asleep, both due to the excitement and the late hour, but my boy was in it with me for the long haul. He would go for long stretches in complete silence and then offer options for ways we could avoid killing the owl. I would consider his thoughts and then explain why they wouldn't work. Eventually, he accepted that I would have to do it. That's when the crying began again, but softly this time as he mourned.
When we finally arrived at my parents' house, I half hoped the owl would already be dead, but it wasn't. I carried my daughter up to her bed and tucked her in then went for the .22. Getting gun was no problem, but then I discovered Daddy didn't keep his ammo with the guns. I had no idea where to find a single bullet.
My son trailed after me up and down stairs as I searched in all the places I thought my father might logically keep his hunting supplies. Eventually, I found a couple of .22 bullets in a basket on top of the refrigerator in the basement. My boy was bawling and begging me to find him headphones. He had accepted that I was going to shoot the owl, but he couldn't bear the thought of hearing the shot and knowing it had happened. His plan was to get on the computer and blast away the sound. I helped him set up something upstairs, though we couldn't find any headphones, and went back down to the kitchen to load the gun.
I slipped a shell in and locked the bolt into place. Again, as I opened the box, I prayed that the owl was already dead. Again, it wasn't. I stared at its terrified eyes for a couple of minutes, trying to nerve myself to pick it up and take it outside for extermination. Finally, my son yelled down the stairs, wondering why he hadn't heard the fateful shot.
I simply couldn't do it. I had driven an extra 45 minutes to put the poor thing out of its misery and had ended up merely prolonging its agony. I hated myself in that moment. I quietly opened the bolt and removed the bullet, telling my son that I just couldn't do it. He threw himself at me, hugging me around the knees as we headed into the living room to cry together.
After a bit, I went to check on the owl to tell it my dad would be home soon. When I opened the box, I couldn't see any movement of its chest. I grabbed a coat hanger and gently lifted its wing for a closer look. Its eyes had finally glazed over. It was gone.
Ten minutes later, my parents walked through the door.
My mom was getting ready to look in the box when I walked into the laundry room. "Don't say anything," I commanded. After one look at my face, they complied. I made sure that they were okay with my daughter spending the night since my son was still stuck to me like glue then I loaded the boxed dead owl and my boy into the car. We dumped the corpse near a church parking lot, not for the religious connotations, though that did comfort me just a little, but because it was a convenient place to pull off the road close to woods.
On Wednesday I returned to school, armed with the new coffee pot still coddled in packing and a sad story to share. When I removed the styrofoam, I began swearing so much that another teacher came in to see what had happened.
It was the wrong pot. Some jerk had switched out the pot with the timer on it for the cheaper flip switch version. If I hadn't spent 15 minutes searching the shelves, I would think it was my mistake, but I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that this error was not my doing.
Normally, I wouldn't swear enough to call someone else's attention to the situation, but this time I couldn't help myself. Normally, I would put the pot back in the box and exchange it at the store. Normally, this would be an annoying inconvenience, but not significant enough to chance having a student hear me swear.
I stood looking at the little green switch on the regular coffee pot for what seemed to be a long while. Then I walked over to the counter and plugged it in. This coffee pot was now mine. I couldn't return it to the store. The box had had a dead owl in it.
My best friend at school was so sympathetic about the owl. So sympathetic that she choked on her lunch laughing at our new coffee pot. Each morning for a month when I walked in and got a cup of perfectly brewed coffee, the teacher who flipped the switch would look at me and the corners of her lips would twitch just a little before she hurried out the room. The next time they go on sale, I'm buying a single serving pot.
